In 1985, cows in Great Britain began drooling and staggering. Some
were pathologically nervous, other bizarrely aggressive. When the "mad
cows" died, as they inevitably did, their brains were shot through with
holes. The cattle got BSE from sheep and long before there were mad cows,
there were mad sheep. Since at least the 18th century, some sheep in England
and France suffered from a hidden, deadly brain disease and when scientists
examined the brains of dead sheep, they saw spongelike holes. In their
jargon-friendly way, they called the disease "spongiform encephalopathy"
– spongiform brain disease. Using the simple but unpalatable technique
of injecting pureed brains of sick animals into healthy animals, scientists
proved that scrapie could pass between animals from sheep to sheep, and
from sheep to other livestock and lab animals. This meant "transmissible
spongiform encephalopathy", or TSE.

Three people in France died of nvCJD, also presumably contracted
by eating meat from diseased animals. More than 80 Britons have already
died of eating mad-cow meat. Most probably got infected while their government
was assuring the nation that the fearsome cow disease could not infect
people.

On 31st January, after the detection of 25 mad cows, Germany
announced plans to slaughter and destroy 400,000 elderly cows, which, due
to the long incubation period, are most prone to the disease. Beef consumption
in Germany plunged 50 percent since November, and 34 countries have banned
German beef imports.

Beef sales have dropped in Spain, where 12 cows showed characteristic
holes in their brains.

The mad cow disease has also appeared in Portugal, Switzerland, The
Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and France.